Some people find February a slow month in the garden, but it shouldn’t be. Spring will arrive before you know and everything will need doing at once. So make the most of February as it is your last chance to finish winter-work and get a head start on Spring. Clear your beds and borders of…
I recently overheard a woman saying she withdew her child from the school choir, in a church school, on the basis that there were “too many churchey songs”. Yet there was no animosity in this slightly eccentric criticism, it was simply that her child preferred musicals. Here in England, faith is a personal matter – to…
When I was a child, both my parents were in the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association. Thirty or 40 years ago, almost everyone in Ireland knew about the Pioneers and a fair few were members. I’d guess that if you mentioned the Association to a group of young people today, there’d be a few blank expressions.…
Greg Daly learns about a charity election that’s electrifying a Wexford parish Anyone paying attention to parish circles online in recent weeks can’t but have noticed that something exciting is happening in the Wexford parish on Barntown. The Mayor of Barntown is a charity election, intended to galvanise the community while boosting parish funds, explains…
Every Republican president since and including Richard Nixon, with the possible exception of the first President Bush, has caused huge controversy. Even before Watergate, Nixon was a controversial figure, in no small part because the US was embroiled in the Vietnam War, an entanglement begun under President Kennedy. Reagan was controversial because of his hardline…
A fundraising ball for health services in Co. Clare, prompted by a young woman’s unshakeable belief in angels, will take place this May 20. The Pink Angel Ball owes its name to the description Maureen Lavery offered of the figure she said was accompanying her through her final months with terminal cancer. Maureen died in…
A leading homelessness campaigner has expressed reservations about the proposal for the State to set up a so-called ‘friendly vulture fund’ to aid people experiencing mortgage distress. Such a charitable organisation that would buy distressed loans from hard-pressed homeowners and allow them to stay in their homes would be a key step in tackling Ireland’s…
Fine Gael fig-leaf gathering is arousing more than a little suspicion, writes Paul Keenan From the outset, there have been those voices who argue that the current Citizens’ Assembly, rather than giving voice to the popular will, was actually a diversionary tactic to shift the blame for any move towards introducing abortion to Ireland from…
Gráinne McElwee, who previously worked with the Council for Catholic Maintained Schools in the diocese of Down and Connor, with her nephew Finn after becoming the newest postulant with the Adoration Sisters on Belfast’s Falls Road.
Leinster parishioners have submitted hundreds of complaints to RTÉ about how the Eucharist was ridiculed in the national broadcaster’s flagship chat show. More than 900 letters have been sent from parishes in Laois, Carlow, and Kildare, The Irish Catholic has learned, following a discussion on The Late Late Show in which the Eucharist was referred…
Paul Gargan
Maria Byrne
Greg Daly
David Quinn
Paul Keenan
Courtney McGrail